


Theme of Laurë

by eldvarpa



Series: Fëanorians beyond the First Age (AUs) [23]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Deviates From Canon, F/M, Implied/Referenced Sex, Ivárë is Maglor's Wife, No Angst, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:22:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26883577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eldvarpa/pseuds/eldvarpa
Summary: At the end of the First Age, Ivárë finally leaves Valinor to look for her missing husband.
Relationships: Ivárë/Maglor | Makalaurë, Maglor/Maglor's Wife
Series: Fëanorians beyond the First Age (AUs) [23]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1066016
Comments: 8
Kudos: 31
Collections: Finwëan Ladies Week 2020





	Theme of Laurë

Her things were sitting side by side on her bed, gathered in neat, carefully calculated bundles, each bundle wrapped up in a sturdy piece of fabric. They had appeared all of a sudden, like little soldiers who had been patiently waiting in ambush until their time to charge finally came. 

Ivárë was arranging the bundles in a large bag, humming cheerfully, while Ingwion attempted for the umpteenth time to make her change her mind. 

“Your husband is dead, what do you think you can accomplish by travelling all the way to Middle-Earth?” 

Ingwion could not accept that she was about to leave Aman, right after the victorious host had returned from the West, with the few surviving Exiles and the news that Maglor and Maedhros had slain their Vanyarin kin in order to commit their final theft. 

Ivárë went on humming and packing, rolling her left sleeve back up as it kept sliding down her arm. 

“Ivárë! Listen to me! Your husband is dead,” Ingwion persisted.

“He isn't,” Ivárë said, calmly and quietly, but with stubborn confidence.

“He _must_ be!”

“If my husband is dead, why are some people so attached to the idea that he is wandering the shores of Middle-Earth, in pain and regret?” Ivárë retorted pointedly. “If Canafinwë is gone, why has no news of that come to me from the Halls of the Dead?”

Ingwion wrung his hands together, trying not to show his frustration in his gestures too. That was something the Ñoldor did. He could not contradict Ivárë so he changed tack.

“You did the right thing by not following your husband to Middle-Earth. His crimes are heinous, and manifold. He remains accursed. Why do you want to meet him again now?”

Ivárë took the largest bundle – the few things Maglor had left with her – and tucked it carefully inside her bag, between two smaller bundles that would hold it in place.

“I did not got because I did not think that going to war against Melkor could truly solve anything, but the Valar turned out to be more interested in sulking and holding onto their grudges than in finding solutions – true solutions, and in the end _you_ had to go to war and fight in their stead.” Ivárë turned towards Ingwion. Ingwion did not meet her gaze. “My husband is a criminal, but my husband he remains, and I intend to honour my marriage vows, now that doing so will not require me to commit any crime myself.”

“And that should make your decision acceptable? Your husband killed people I knew, people who gave their all to fight a good war, he killed them in their sleep!”

Ivárë stopped, her hands still caressing the fine age-old silk swathing a couple of scrolls and a few odd trinkets Maglor had been particularly attached to. “I love him, Ingwion, and I miss him.” She pulled her hands away from the memories and put the last bundle on top of all the rest. “My decision has nothing to do with being right, or honourable. I'm not all-wise Nerdanel, who is content to abide with her Valar-worshipping family. I was never that pious, and I know my choices do not deserve any praise.”

“You would have all the praise in the world if you –”

“Behaved differently? Ignored where my heart truly lies? To be sure, I could play the part of the distraught, outraged wife but I wouldn't enjoy it, I'm afraid.”

“Your husband should be the one to come to you, if he cared about you.”

Ivárë tightened the strings of her bag and tied them, simply but securely. Ingwion had her full attention now. “It would be self-righteous of me to sit and wait for him to come to Valinor, now.”

Ingwion could not keep still at that. “Self-righteous!” he yelled, his arms flying open.

“Yes, and somewhat selfish. I am sure my husband needs me more than I need him.”

Ingwion banged as fist against the nearest solid surface – a sturdy door-frame. “You are a fool!”

“Perhaps.” Ivárë bowed amusedly to him, and crossed the room to a large chest. She took out a couple of change of clothes and carried them to the bed.

“If you go I don't think I can forgive you.”

Ivárë nodded. “It is your right. The Valar do foster a mindset wherein people think in absolutes. I wonder when they are going to admit their mistakes and make amends for them?”

“The Valar have nothing to do with this!”

“If you say so.”

Ivárë put her clothes in a smaller bag, closed that too and carried both bags to the parlour, where the windows where open and let in a faint, melodious peal of bells together with the magnolia-scented breeze that was the hallmark of Valmar's springs. Ingwion watched her in sullen silence, then followed her. He spoke again while Ivárë stood facing the window, seemingly rapt by the sound, her eyes blind to the view over Valmar.

“When are you leaving?”

Ivárë let out a sigh and turned to look at him. “Tomorrow. I will ride to Alqualondë as speedily as possible.”

“...what about your daughter?”

“She will stay here, of course. Her love is here, and her friends are here.”

Ingwion circled around the centre table with the golden lyre standing in the middle of it and stood right before her. The vehemence and outrage were gone from his voice, and he just sounded sad. “You have friends here too.”

Ivárë smiled. She stared at him fondly, then brushed the back of her hand on his right cheek and kissed the other one, mother-like. He had been her pupil too, before Maglor. “Perhaps one day we will meet again, and perhaps you will be able to forgive me after all.”

Ingwion swatted her hand away, shaking his head, and stormed out of the room, but she saw the tears in his eyes.

*

The Telerin mariners who steered the ship bound for Middle Earth did their utmost to ignore her presence on board, and put even more effort into ignoring the bright emblem of the House of Fëanor stitched into her travelling clothes. A present from deft-handed Caranthir, that Ivárë had never used before.

Elemmírë did volunteer to go with her on the morning of her departure from Valmar, but Ivárë turned her down. It would have been wrong to take Elemmírë away from her wife and her pursuits – her poetry and her music – to look for a father she had never seen much of. 

Ivárë was indeed happy that her daughter had found her place in Valinor, in spite of her parents. 

People had much to say about Ivárë's marriage, their disapproval reached deep, its roots had nothing to do with Maglor's crimes. People had been frowning on her marriage since Ivárë suddenly decided to marry an elf who was younger than her by several centuries, and who was her pupil, someone tied to her by a bond that should have been made only of trust and respect, a pure bond. 

No criticism had been spared for Ivárë's misplaced desire and lack of self-control.

People were right, to a point. 

Her love was part-obsession, sheer burning possessiveness. 

She had been reluctant to let go of the artist she nurtured and chiselled with her teachings, on whom she had bestowed all the best she had to give. 

No one could have given more back to her than Maglor did. 

Maglor's songs shone in her memory like the sun kissing the ever-shifting surface of the sea in a kaleidoscope of sparks and flashes. His voice was an everlasting fire, constantly crackling within her bosom. The music they created together lay dormant in her body, like a string attached to her heart which had not been plucked in all too long.

The match had been a happy one, if unconventional. 

Fëanor had not been thrilled with Ivárë's ties to Ingwë and Indis, but if nothing else he understood her desire to keep Maglor with her, her need to cling to her creation. Fëanor didn't criticise her, because he cherished his sons and their achievements in the same all-encompassing way. Much talk had been spread after the Rebellion of the Ñoldor of him not being a good father to them, but Ivárë knew better than most. Maglor could not have sung the way he did without his father's love. 

She started humming, but was instantly cast a belligerent glance from one of the mariners.

She closed her mouth, and smiled at him. 

*

In Lindon, she introduced herself as the wife of Canafinwë Fëanárion to the young High King of the Ñoldor and his court, and made no mystery of the fact that she sought her husband. 

They told her the same dull tales that had been brought back to Valinor with the returning Exiles.

She asked them if anybody had actually ever seen Maglor's corpse or seen him sing in despair by the sea. 

When people grew tired of staring at her honey-blonde hair and her clothes as one would stare at an elf with six legs, she was able to learn that all that was left of Beleriand was the deep firth of Lindon, broken segments of the Blue Mountains to the north and south of it, as well as a number of isles: the highest peaks of the broken continent, which the sea had failed to submerge. The area north of Forlindon was largely uninhabited, save for small villages of Men along the coast. 

Ivárë bought a horse in exchange for some old gems, took all of her baggage with her, still largely untouched, her small travelling lute, and set out. 

She was fairly sure that Maglor must be somewhere north, very likely close to the mountains, in the heart of ruined Beleriand, but she decided not to go there. 

Maglor would come to her in due time. 

She made for the coast, high ragged cliffs dropping into sandy bays then sloping up again. She sang together with the roar of the sea, a sea which was altogether different from the one she had crossed, savage and mournful, as if it were still imbued with echoes of all the death it had swallowed.

She stopped where the last ruins she had encountered were just barely visible off in the frothy distance. 

She lit a bonfire, and sang a song of hiding to prevent anyone that wasn't meant to see it from seeing it. 

Then she settled with her lute and sang all the songs Maglor and she had sung together.

At last, on an overcast day where all colour seemed to have been drained from the world, Maglor's familiar gait sounded next to her. The rustle of his clothes rivalled the hiss of the wind, and was a far more melodious to her than the strings she was plucking.

He sat on the other side of the bonfire and smiled at her. 

She put her lute down and pulled a bundle from her large bag. She handed it to him.

Maglor opened it and his smile spread to his tired eyes. “Oh, I had not had one of these in forever.”

Ivárë shivered at the sound of his voice. “I thought you might be happy to eat them. They were always your favourites.”

Maglor took one of the biscuits for himself and gave one to her. Ivárë let him have the other six she had packed. 

“You baked them?” Maglor asked as he munched on them.

“Elemmírë did. She cherishes her grandfather's cookbook as if it were a Silmaril.”

Maglor chuckled, and just barely managed to catch a piece that had broken off one of the biscuits before it could slide down into the sand. “Don't tell me she cooks Father's dishes for the good folk of Valmar.”

“Of course she does.” Ivárë grinned. She wet her lips like a cat that has just eaten a particularly tasty morsel before she embarked on her tale. “There was this lady, who kept blabbering on and on and on about _how great a pity_ it was that she had to be born a granddaughter of Fëanáro, but how lucky she was to have been welcomed among the Vanyar instead. So Elemmírë invited her to dinner, cooked a whole array of dishes, adding twice as much spice as your father used on _bad_ days.” She paused for emphasis. “Then she donned a fire red dress and received the lady in a hall where a huge tengwar calligraphy took up most of the long wall. The poor lady was crying her eyes out and breathing fire by the end of the dinner.”

Maglor scrunched his face: he was – to his chagrin – the only member of his family to not tolerate overly spicy food. He ate the last bit of biscuit, pitying the misguided Vanyarin lady.

Ivárë laughed at his expression. 

“That is almost as bad as kinslaying!” he protested, but joined her laughter a moment later.

“Ah, I missed your laughter.”

“I miss my laughter too, to be honest,” Maglor said. “How long are you staying?”

“How long?” Ivárë scoffed. “Silly boy, how can you even imagine that I would come all the way from Aman just to see you, listen to your firework of a voice for a little while and then lose it all over again?”

Maglor's expression became grave. “The hate of the Valar is still on me.”

“So I've heard. But you did all you could to make them hate you already.”

“...Unless you helped me try to wrest their Star of Hope from the night sky.”

Ivárë actually looked up, though the sky was grey and the sea was grey and the sand looked grey. She sighed deeply. 

“Would you do it?” Ivárë asked.

Maglor didn't reply and instead asked in turn, “were you expecting me to be contrite?” 

“Oh, no. I knew you when I married you, though most other people seemed to be of the opinion that _I_ should have been contrite simply for teaching you, for turning your voice into a weapon.”

“I miss my brothers and my father. Their deaths are my only true regret.”

“I came here to hear your story, too.”

“Do you think it will be very different from what you know?”

“It will be _yours_.”

*

“I take back what I said earlier, this place isn't as scary as it looks,” Ivárë said, staring at the impossibly high ceiling and bits of crumbled pillars of what had once been a fancy hall in a fancy palace and was now Maglor's bedroom. 

Lying under a pile clean smelling furs, her body warm and tingly after days spent doing little more than having sex with her husband and singing with her husband – the two things not always clearly distinguishable – definitely had a hand in changing her opinion. 

“So this used to be your kingdom?”

“More or less,” Maglor said, nuzzling against her breasts after groping and sucking on them, while she combed her fingers through his thick curls, or tried to. “It was very close the borders of Himring, and near the roads to Thargelion and Himlad. The twins were always at a bit of a disadvantage, living down in Estolad, but they were also not in the immediate way of danger.”

Ivárë hummed for him to go on. 

“We often met here to celebrate birthdays and other festivities. Or just to spend some time together. You couldn't even glimpse the sea from here back then. Nelyo liked it because he could keep an eye on his fortress and be there in a few hours if need be.”

Ivárë's mind went to island she had seen in the distance, with the crumbling buildings stretching up black against the sky, like trees frozen in perpetual winter. Maglor had grown melancholy when he pointed the ruins of Himring to her. 

“Amras and Amrod worked on all carvings and a chunk of the furniture.” Maglor shifted and buried his face in the crook of her neck. “We met here, the last time, to celebrate their birthday and father's birthday three days later, just a couple of weeks before the battle of the Sudden Flame.”

Ivárë started kissing the top of his head, and her hands travelled down his back. She pinched his buttocks, kneaded them, and she coaxed him away from the memories and into her body. Maglor fucked her with abandon, with his mouth glued to her ear, whispering a song that made the feeling of his cock inside her ten times as good. 

Later, while her body still resonated with the pleasure – and it was yet not enough – Maglor finally unwound one of the two tight rolls of parchment Elemmírë had entrusted to her mother.

He read it with the utmost concentration.

“What does our daughter tell you?” Ivárë drowsily asked.

“It's a copy of her Aldudénië. the definitive edition I assume.”

“Oh,” Ivárë huffed, “what a boring woman our daughter is.”

“Meticulous,” Maglor corrected. “There are some more personal comments at the end of the work...less savoury than the poem itself.” He grinned. “How is she?” 

“Fine. She married some fifty years after you were gone. A perfectly respectable marriage to a perfectly respectable Vanyarin lady, well-born and well-bred. Not even Indis could come up with a respectable excuse to refuse to offer her felicitations.” 

“It was lucky indeed for her to be counted among your people. Iváriel sounds very nice too.”

Elemmírë had been born ten years after the Silmarils, when Tirion was already too unquiet a place for a very young child to be. Ivárë usually stayed in Valmar anyway and Elemmírë had spent almost all of her childhood there, away from any simmering turmoil. 

“I would just have liked to meet her as an adult, but it is for the better that she stayed in Aman.” Maglor kissed the parchment. “Her grandfather would be proud of her beautiful handwriting.”

Elemmírë was one of the very few Vanyar who had adopted the tengwar and stuck to them, too.

Maglor wound the parchment back up with care and set it on a carved box beside the bed. 

Ivárë and he stood up to have food, but didn't bother to get dressed or bathe because as soon as they were done eating they had sex again. They dozed off, and when they woke up sunlight crept in from a hole in the far corner of the room. Robins danced in its hazy brilliance.

“So...what of your brother?” 

Maglor didn't need to ask which brother Ivárë was referring to. “What of him?”

“Did he _really_ commit suicide as the story goes?” Ivárë had every reason to doubt that people actually knew what became of Maedhros, considering how stubbornly wrong they had been about Maglor.

“Well...” Maglor swayed his head from side to side. “That may have been a bit of a misunderstanding.”

He went on to explain.

Ivárë bit her lips then snorted then she couldn't restrain herself any longer. Her laughter echoed through all the rooms and scared the birds away. “So you told this famous Elrond, son of Elwing, that Maedhros lies in the middle of a pool of lava and that your Silmaril rests beneath the sea, before you took off and disappeared? No wonder he started spreading false information!”

Maglor shrugged. “It's quite a convenient misunderstanding for me.”

“So you did on purpose.”

“I didn't want to lie to him, but I didn't want him to know that Nelyo is just asleep, with his and my Silmaril, and that all three are technically under the sea, since the cave is below sea level.” Maglor's eyes grew melancholy, the same as when he looked at the ruins of Himring, though he kept smiling. “Nelyo really needed the rest, but I don't think Mandos was the place for him.”

Ivárë could only agree. “May I see him?”

“Yes, of course. But the place is really deep inside the earth.”

*

At one point, Ivárë thought the descent through a narrow crack in the stone would never end. 

The passage was barely large enough for a grown elf to squeeze through and at times so steep you had to use your hands to keep your balance. 

It was easy to imagine Maedhros's state of mind when he had made that long descent, to disappear from the world. 

Maedhros lay on a vast pillar of obsidian shining in the middle of a pool of lava, his arms resting cosily on his chest, the radiance of the Silmarils just peeking out from under his hands. His hair was draped down the sides of the rock, and along its length slid drops of light that created small fireworks when they hit the lava. That was probably the root of the magic that turned a lake of lava into a haven, though it was easy for Ivárë to see how Maglor had made the place safe with song and kept it safe with song. His song had etched the very rock.

“And this is why you are staying here, to watch over your brother and devote all of your life to him,” Ivárë said softly. “Mind if I help you?”

“I don't. Nelyo wouldn't either.”

Ivárë took his hand in hers. “Good, because we will need to dole out our strength carefully.”

Maglor frowned at her.

Ivárë smirked. “Oh, is it too early for you to feel it?”

“What?”

“Or maybe you're just too taken with your brother and your past. But now it's time to turn to the future, too”

Maglor kept frowning at her, until a glimmer took root in his eyes and his forehead gradually smoothed out. “You mean –” 

“Canafinwë,” Ivárë sighed. “Yes...I'm pregnant.”

Ivárë could have sworn the very lava started to laugh.

*

“Emya!”

Ivárë and Maglor's second daughter rushed down the hillside towards the entrance to the palace, dark blond hair flying behind her. She was careful to skirt the clumps of obsidian that had begun peeking up among the tall grass all the way down from Maedhros's rest. Rather than like rocks, they seemed to grow like trees, spreading out from a single root where Maedhros and his Silmarils lay. 

Goldberry threw herself at her and hugged her. 

Ivárë was surprised to suddenly see her older brother behind her.

“We met on the way here,” Goldberry said, out of breath.

Tinfang calmly walked up to her and hugged Ivárë too. 

“Were you planning to meet, or is something wrong?” Ivárë asked, hoping her children weren't visiting to report some disaster.

She was always overjoyed to see them. She and Maglor didn't want Goldberry and Tinfang to live the same secluded life as them. So they let them out into the world, as soon as they were willing and ready to go, and even though neither Goldberry or Tinfang could claim a proper place among their kin, they could still enjoy what the world had to offer them.

“No trouble,” Tinfang said, cocking his head towards an overlarge package that seemed to float behind him. “I was coming to deliver these supplies I got from some merchants from the east.”

“We met near lake Evendim,” Goldberry chimed in.

“Where is atya?” Tinfang asked, dropping his package next to the pillar with the eight-pointed star at the entrance of the palace. “He should like these supplies.”

“He's visiting Uncle, he should be back in a bit.”

Goldberry and Tinfang both nodded. They knew about Maedhros, that he was resting somewhere underground, but they didn't tell them where exactly, as an extra precaution.

“Shall we wait for him inside, or go down to the sea?” Ivárë asked.

“The sea,” Goldberry and Tinfang said almost in unison. 

Ivárë let her children lead the way, basking in their presence. Goldberry's features were a mix of her father and her mother's, but she didn't inherit their passion for music; Goldberry's strength was her closeness to living creatures, which reminded Maglor of his brother Celegorm. Tinfang looked like a tall, spindle-like, male variant of his great-grandmother Míriel, weaving mighty tapestries of music. 

“So why were you travelling here?” Ivárë asked Goldberry, when they were comfortably settled on the sand. 

Goldberry fidgeted with the dried flowers attached to the collar of her dress. “I met this weird person...” 

“A man, a woman or what?” Ivárë asked.

“A guy.”

“Not an elf?”

“...I don't think he's an elf. He's not a human either. Or a maia,” Goldberry hastened to add.

“Then what is he?”

“I'm not sure.”

“His name?”

“I –...didn't ask,” Goldberry said, her eyes widening slightly as if it had just occurred to her that asking someone's name was the normal thing to do when meeting them for the first time. She had received two names from her parents that no-one really knew, and was happy to go with whatever the creatures she met called her.

“Where did you meet him?”

“In an old forest, west of where cousin Tyelperinquar's town is. It does not take too long to get there from here – or here from there I guess, if you go by river.”

“So how did you meet him? Do you think he's dangerous?”

Goldberry pursed her lips and looked down at her own hands. “Well, I tried to catch him in the river. But his song is stronger than mine.”

“Oh Muráya,” Ivárë sighed. Tinfang chuckled. Both recalled when Goldberry had gotten herself chased by a bear as a child and ended up talking her way out the encounter, and the time she fell from an oak and would have died if she hadn't already made a friend out of the tree, who caught her with her roots. Her recklessness was probably her most obvious connection to her grandfather.

“I don't think he was angry at me though. He could easily have harmed me.”

“And what do yo intend to do now?”

“I'm not sure,” Goldberry mumbled. Both Ivárë and Tinfang could tell she had something in mind but didn't want to share it – yet, at least. “What about you, hannya?” Goldberry asked Tinfang, to divert attention from her.

Tinfang wrapped an arm around her. “I tracked down the other two maiar who arrived from the West. Convinced them to head east instead of loitering about here.”

“That is amazing, hannya! How did you do it?”

“I talked to them first, and instilled a yearning in them, then in the night I played my flute, pushing my song eastward. They went after it like ducklings lining up after their mother.”

Goldberry clapped her hands at her brother and leant over to kiss his cheek. Ivárë commended him too. Tinfang still managed to genuinely impress her. As a child, Tinfang had often claimed he was going to walk among the stars, and sometimes it did feel like he could just take off on the wings of one of his melodies, especially the melodies he played on that flute of his. The instrument itself had no special properties. It was just one of two identical flutes made by Curufin for Amrod and Amras. Come to think of it, Maglor had never said where the other one was. Ivárë had always assumed it was lost, but maybe there was more to it.

“Can you teach me a song to catch that man?” Goldberry asked.

“But you don't even know what he is. And what would you do to him?” Tinfang grinned before adding, “or with him?”

“With who?” Maglor asked, momentarily rescuing Goldberry from having to reply.

She leapt up to greet him, throwing her arms around him and hugging him so fiercely that she left one of her dried flowers attached to the front of his tunic.

“Our children were telling me about some interesting encounters.” Ivárë gestured for Maglor to sit down next to her.

“I was going to make something to eat,” Maglor said, carefully removing Goldberry's flower and handing it back to her. “We...forgot to eat yesterday.”

“I brought some provisions from the east that might come in handy.” Tinfang stood and grabbed his father's right hand with his left, greeting him with a bright smile. More cheekily, he went on, “including some of their strongest spices.”

Maglor glowered at him for a moment. “You are free to use as much as you want. Did you get any flour?”

“Plenty.”

“Splendid.” Maglor offered Ivárë his free hand. “Let's go then. We will make a lunch worthy of a feast of old.”

**Author's Note:**

> [Ivárë](http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Iv%C3%A1r%C3%AB) gets a single offhand mention as one of the "most magical" Elven singers. Here I decided to write them as a woman and Maglor's teacher+wife.
> 
> Tinfang too was supposed to be one of the best Elven singers at some point (there is a little more information about him iirc).
> 
> Emya = mommy  
> Atya = daddy  
> Muráya = sleep-awe (or something)  
> hannya = my brother
> 
> Possible sequels:  
> \- Ivárë and Maglor decide not to meddle in Celebrimbor's affairs and things stay more or less canonical  
> \- Ivárë and Maglor and their children spirit Celebrimbor away  
> (- Maedhros wakes up at some point? Joins the marriage?)


End file.
